When Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a measure that made California the first state to require public companies to add women to their boards of directors, he professed himself undeterred by its potentially fatal legal flaws. “It’s high time corporate boards include the people who constitute more than half the ‘persons’ in America,” he wrote in a Sept. 30 signing statement about Senate Bill 826...

A production associate works on a Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif. on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) By Rex Crum | | Bay Area News Group PUBLISHED: August 14, 2018 at 7:59 am | UPDATED: August 14, 2018 at 6:20 pm They might not be the Model 3, but three of Tesla’s independent board directors could soon be at the center of the latest drama involving the electric carmaker.

Facebook, Google and Tesla shareholders have something in common: They’re not happy with management. In the past week, the three companies’ investors shot down shareholder proposals seeking more accountability from the companies and their leaders. All three companies’ founders own considerable stakes in each of the companies they founded — or have outsize influence — so shareholder proposals are usually an exercise in futility. That may not be unique in the business world...

SAN FRANCISCO — Leaders of the prestigious Silicon Valley venture capital firm Benchmark Capital on Monday posted an unusual letter in answer to an even more unusual question: Why did they sue the founder of Uber, a wildly successful portfolio company poised to make them billions of dollars...

SAN FRANCISCO — New account openings at Wells Fargo plunged in October, the first full month after the bank became mired in a scandal linked to bogus accounts opened without the permission of its customers, the financial services giant reported Thursday. Wells Fargo said consumer checking account openings fell 27 percent in October, compared with September activity. Account openings also were down 44 percent compared with October 2015...

For Steph Curry, other athletes, it's game time on the court and in the boardroom By Marisa Kendall, mkendall@bayareanewsgroup.com Posted: 07/16/2016 08:52:10 AM PDT Updated: 07/16/2016 09:01:00 AM PDT Bryant Barr, second from left, CEO and co-founder of Slyce, has a meeting with investors and team members at Slyce in Palo Alto, Calif., Friday, July 15, 2016. From left are: Michael Spector, Barr, Jim Cai, Jason Mayden, Fern Madelbaum and Lilika Teu.....

GoPro CEO Nick Woodman earned $77.4 million in compensation, making him the best-paid CEO in the Bay Area, according to What the Boss Makes, the annual Equilar Silicon Valley CEO Pay Study conducted for the Bay Area News Group. The 40-year-old Silicon Valley native hit the jackpot when the video camera company he founded after a 2002 surfing trip went public last summer...

Activist shareholders are pushing Chevron to stop using corporate money to influence elections, part of a growing effort to raise awareness about money in politics after the oil company spent an unprecedented $3 million last year to sway Richmond voters...

Susan McClain Koret, 'chairwoman for life' of the prestigious $500 million Koret Foundation, is asserting herself in a legal action to return the philanthropic group's mission to what she says is the original vision of its founder, her late husband, Joseph Koret. The foundation's directors, though, have countersued to remove her from the board...

'Executive Superstars, Peer Groups and Over Compensation! -- Cause, Effect, and Solution,' was released last month. Don't let the dry-as-toast title fool you. This report should be required reading for every person in Silicon Valley who sits on a board of any size. I found it particularly illuminating with so many of our largest companies either having tapped new CEOs in the past year (Hewlett ...

Companies in 2011 were increasingly candid about how they compensate their chief executives. Hewlett-Packard, Apple and others filed lengthy explanations of how they decided what to pay their top bosses.